Fred Bauder wrote:
Wouldn't it belong to his heirs?
Fred
From: Sean Barrett
I have a document created by a sailor in the [[Kriegsmarine]] during [[World War II]]. Thus, the document is approximately 60 years old, but its author didn't die until 1982. The document has no copyright notice associated with it and was never published until it was captured by the Allies after the war. I can justify a claim to fair use for Wikipedia's purposes, but I'd like to determine what its copyright status really is. Can anyone help me?
Who the copyright belongs to is a different issue.
I would venture to guess that the vast majority of material that is protected by copyright lacks an owner who would have rights to be protected. This may have some bearing on the desire of major copyright holders to have criminal law apply. I would suggest that in criminal law it may not be necessary to prove who owns the copyright, while in civil law the complainant needs to have standing.
Ec